Tales of adventures in quilting, gardening, photography and cooking from the Kingdom of Chiconia

Meet Rosita

Or my new adjustable tailor’s dummy, if you prefer, but I think the other description is much more interesting. She’s red, she’s curvaceous, and the name Rosita seems made for her.

The lovely Husband of Chiconia found her for me on eBay, and she’s winging her way to me as we speak. She has dials everywhere, so I can adjust her torso width and depth, waist and hip width and depth, and torso length, which will give me a much better fit than dummies which simply get wider without getting deeper. I can give her a sturdy neck or a slender one. I can make her tall or petite on her stand, and best of all, she has a hem length marker for putting in pins at exactly the same level all round.

I’m thrilled at the new addition to the sewing room, and she’ll certainly brighten up her corner. She’s going to spend her time being rather portly, because I am, but it’ll make fitting garments so much easier than trying to struggle in and out of precariously pinned pieces in my underwear. The language will be a lot cleaner, to start with! I’ll be able to see where things aren’t lying right, or there’s a saggy or gappy thing in some otherwise invisible place, adjust seams so they lie straight and make sure collars sit right. It’s going to be fab! I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve such a clever and thoughtful Husband, but he’s mine! Find your own!

She’s due by the end of this coming week, so I think the Swoopy Shirt is going to be her first mission.

I have one the same – red and adjustable with hem pinning thingummy. I used to have a vintage one – which I named Gertrude after a blind, mute character in a French novel – but she was lost by the irresponsible relative who borrowed her. (A bit big to lose, really!) I would have to name this one after some poor woman trapped in a cellar or some such as she lives in a dark cupboard most of the time. How about Miranda? (The Collector, if I remember rightly.)

Slightly macabre, but a good name for her! I think Rosita is a cheerful colour and deserves to live out in the sun. The trouble with the vintage ones is that they’re the wrong shape for modern figures! And I agree, rather tricky to lose a dummy. It would take quite a degree of talent to ‘forget’ what you did with it…

Then her loss must be doubly painful! I’m sadly lacking in feminine attributes, being quite rectangular, without many sticky-out bits. I’m wondering just how waistless and bumless Rosita can be made to be…

Oh la Ms Rosita of the Negotiable Dimensions, you ARE a saucy looking madam, I hope you treat Miss Kate nice now and let her dial all her numbers accurately. And not that I’ve really been looking Kate, but I beg to differ, I think you are quite admirably plentiful in feminine attributes *wink*

What a wonder HoC 🙂 I remember from being fitted up for various garments how uncomfortable the pinning is, I can’t imagine trying to do it for yourself. There are days I wish I had adjusting dials but the closest I get is giving bread a miss for a bit!

He is a bit good, isn’t he… The nice thing about Rosita is that you can pin things onto her as well, which a live body would tend to protest about… Yes, person-dials would be handy; I’d start with slenderising my ankles, giving myself a waist, getting rid of my threatening double chin and dialling down the arthritis…

I have an adjustable mannequin but she is size small and, therefore, has not much of a bust going on, whereas I do. So, she has to wear a padded bra which looks very odd to anybody walking into my workroom, though I feel no need to explain 😉